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Sunday 5^th November – windsurfing **** Bradfield – sunny but cold

19.73 kt. max, 17.89 kt. ave., 6.20 kt. hr., 10.31 kt mile, 24.50 km., 7.67 kt. alpha.

Fanatic Cat and F2 Xantos with Tushingham Lightning 8.5.

After the epic month of October where I windsurfed 13 times I haven’t been out for 7 days but the winds have been light and I am full of cold again:( Today has looked promising for a while with a light to moderate NW, sunny but cold and a good tide on the River Stour at Bradfield:) Mag went out on her bike early going to Landguard where sadly she picked a large carrier bag full of discarded rubbish including newspaper, wet wipes, fishing line and hooks left by some oaf of a sea angler right by the wooden jetty in the middle of Landguard Nature Reserve, they won’t be happy until they get fishing banned!!!! Then I hitched the trailer, we packed lunch (an odd green homemade soup from vegetables given by some friends) and headed to Essex at 8.20. Stopping in Ipswich to get £90’s worth of diesel to go with the £763 it cost for our van yesterday it’s been a bad start to the month!!!  We were first to arrive at the lovely Bradfield getting our favourite spot in wall to wall sunshine:) Mag made a cuppa while I checked the conditions, again a wind shadow but there looked to be some breeze half way across so rigged 8.5 for the Xantos 310. Neil Hurrell then arrived closely followed by Jason Powell, David Coles and Bradfield first time Andrew Twinn :) With my nice bridge camera being repaired for the second time in a couple of months I managed to find a little waterproof Fujifilm camera for £13 off ebay so after putting my Autumn wetsuit on I then taped the camera to my helmet to see what the video was like??? I was first out on the water so only got Neil briefly on the way back, getting 12 minutes of boring jerky windsurfing video in patchy on/off planing conditions:( Shame really as with smooth water it only needed a fraction more wind! I came ashore to discover I had filled the memory card so took the camera off and went out on the Longboard. I beat up the Stour past the recently moored coaster at Mistley harbour, then sailed close along the shore past the many famous Mistley swans including some black ones all the way to the railway bridge which marks the end of navigation! There were some good sections on the beat, nicely powered up but there only ever seemed wind on half the river at any time! There were loads of wading birds here waiting for the tide to turn. I then ran back cross to the shore before heading out into the river near the little port but sadly the wind dropped and I couldn’t get planing, 8.5 was not enough to get my 20 kilo board going and 9.4 would have been better! Still I was out a couple of hours with only my hands getting cold and I think several of the sailors had been having a good sail on big sail and formula sized boards:) Another Bradfield first timer was there from Newmarket with the Alloy Neil Pryde foil on his formula board.  It was the first foil I had seen locally and he was going OK but it was making a horrendous singing sound which has put me off getting a foil, it’s enough to drive you crazy !!! – must try to find out his name, nice bloke:) Peter Cutts had arrived but not windy enough for him so took some pics along with a drone flyer who apparently had been buzzing the windsurfers, look forward to seeing that footage! After some warming green soup I had a couple of runs on the 310 again but struggled to get going so decided to call it a day. Got changed to warm up, had cuppa and chunky Kit-Kat, packed up and was, as usual, the last to leave! So a nice sail, 4 stars just, could have had a little more wind and a bit warmer would have been nice but a great spot to sail especially in the sunshine:)

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